Liquid Compass (WIP)

My joke at work is to stonily insist that I not be addressed with metaphors.

Only staggering literality for me, thank you! I've already asked you once nicely.

But in actuality I can't ignore certain symbols.

The last time he and I hang out is near the causey way at Lake Monroe, while exploring an abandoned waterslide; in a liquid, transitional space, now choked with foliage. That day, we trip through the woods, examining the remains of the Zoom Flume. I slip down the fiberglass incline and land with my boots planted in a leaf-clogged depository.

We wander around a now-rotted geodesic dome home overlooking the lake, festooned with shitty spraypaint. It's another unabashed bummer symbol, this broken utopian structure, bleakly scrawled with Juggalo bon mots. In a somewhat accusatory tone, he asks me How's my eyesight? How bout my internal compass? And has this been an average week for me?

He's referring to heavy drinking in Halloween costumes. This after I'd escorted him through his first drunken hook-up. Am I tugging this kid down a mucky ravine?

It is a relief, in a way, that he is leaving, before he finds out that I am not always nice. He's already learned today that I can not climb a tree. This hasn't been an average week; I haven't picked up a pen. I want to draw with people, to strike a balance between art making and social, to channel a solid engagement with something bigger and longer than myself. But part of me is required to court oblivion, occasionally in costume. Part of me invites in the unwelcome guest, the liquid variable, the destabilizing factor to flood where boredom might root.


(Work in progress, possibly to appear as a longer piece in the print edition of Glob, my anti-blog, forthcoming in early 2013.)